


Bad Blood

by hatstand



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cults, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Drug Use, and how extremely messed up everyone would be later, i just wanted to talk about how starsky got attacked by a bear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29888709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatstand/pseuds/hatstand
Summary: When Starsky’s kidnapped by a cult ready to sacrifice him within 24 hours, Hutch saves him. But has Starsky truly escaped?
Relationships: Ken Hutchinson & David Starsky
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Bad Blood

Hutch is used to hospital waiting rooms by now, but it doesn’t mean he likes them. Today is not going to change that. He’s sweat-soaked and exhausted, road dust still dry at the back of his throat and an ache in his bones from punches thrown and taken. The last 24 hours have been pure panic and pure action. He needs to shower. He needs a meal and a bed.

He needs a doctor to walk through those closed blank double doors with a clipboard and a reassuring promise that he can see his friend now; Starsky in bed with a goofy smile to tell him: I’m ok. You made it. You got me, I’m fine, now go home.

The doors stay closed, and Hutch’s eye wanders to the clock – barely 9am, they were in court this time yesterday – and then lands on a discarded morning newspaper on the empty seat opposite. The headline: CULT LEADER SENTENCED TO LIFE. Hutch reaches for it with a wince, his back muscles protesting. Flipping it open sends a chill through him he hadn’t braced for, expecting simple anger. Simon Marcus: tall forehead, mane of wild dark hair, inverted cross tattooed at the temple above deadly black eyes. The maniac who lured all those poor, lost souls to his so-called church and promised them a future if they did as he told them, if they murdered and tortured at his whim. The same followers who took Starsky and damn near murdered him too.

Recoiling, Hutch folds the newspaper to conceal the face. He pauses with it on his lap, dimly aware of sports scores in small type, before crumpling it in his hands till it’s crushed down small and throwing it, hard, away from him.

‘How much you lose, Hutch? Didn’t think you were the gambling type.’

The voice alone lifts a weight off Hutch’s shoulders. There he is: Starsky in borrowed hospital scrubs, alive and safe and, if not smiling goofily, looking mightily relieved to be upright.

‘What are you doing out of bed? Thought they’d keep you in for sure.’

‘I used my famous charm to sweet-talk ‘em into letting me go. Besides, I don’t like this outfit any more than the last one.’

Hutch rises and takes the paper-bagged bundle of personal items from Starksy’s arms. He came in wearing that crazy cult robe and nothing else: it needs to be in the evidence room, and he’s damn sure Starsky doesn’t want to see it again. There’s a smaller packet on top; meds, he guesses.

Hutch quietly assesses the damage as they walk. A dressing on Starsky’s cheek, covering burned and broken skin; a bandage on his left forearm – perhaps a cut from when Gail slit the rope to free him? Nothing else visible except dark circles under his eyes and a lack of the usual bounce in his step.

At least Dobey’s given them both a couple of days clear.

‘Take you back to yours? I can stop a while if you like.’

Starsky smiles. ‘Nah, Hutch. I know you saved my life and all but, you stink.’

Hutch looks affronted, then lifts his shirt to sniff at his armpit a little, and coughs. He’s playing it up, but it’s not untrue.

Starsky chuckles.

He’s ok. He made it. He’s fine.

*

Starsky loves this apartment but it feels wrong when he walks in, like it doesn’t belong to him any more or something. He steps out of his hospital slides and the rug feels itchy. It’s too warm, too bright. He’s been gone a day and it feels like a year.

Hutch is fussing with his meds and looking like he wants to hold a parade, though, so Starsky smiles and lets him fuss till he doesn’t think he can keep the smile up any more.

‘Go home, Hutch. You need to sleep even more than I do. I’ll pick you up when we’re back on duty, ok?’

Hutch opens his mouth to argue, then gives it up.

‘Call if you need me.’

‘Oh, I’ll holler.’ Starsky watches him make it to the door and feels a shift of panic in his chest; a throb in his arm under that damn bandage. ‘Hutch?’

Hutch turns, but it’s slow. Starsky’s not had a lot of time to figure what happened while he was gone but it’s etched in lines on Hutch’s face and he feels guilt and fear and gratitude nudging at the edge of his muddy senses. They’ve both been through the wringer.

‘Thanks. For coming after me. For saving me.’

Hutch dips his head, accepting it. ‘Was a close one, huh?’

Starsky nods. He doesn’t want to, can’t go there. Not now. He’s on the tip of falling apart and Hutch isn’t in any state to put him back together. They need a little healing time first.

The door clicks, and Hutch is gone.

Starsky grabs the counter, his knees buckling. Next thing he knows he’s sitting on the floor in a cold sweat trying not to throw up. His arm hurts. The pain meds are up on the counter laid out in Hutch’s nice neat rows for days of the week but he’s on the floor, so that’s not happening. His arm, though. He doesn’t know what’s under the bandage, he doesn’t remember them burning him there, cutting him there, he doesn’t think –

They had a cleaver, at the end. A bat, a chain, a knife. A cleaver. He remembers seeing it and thinking: you had to deal with a freaking bear, Dave, and these people are gonna kill you anyhow so why is this the thing that has got you past panic? But he knows why. He’s seen the crime scenes, read the reports; he knows how these cult kids kill. Five minutes. That was all it was, five minutes out and Hutch would’ve got there too late and he knows it’s not what happened but there’s a corner of his brain circling around it, hearing the chants still over and over and wondering if this, now, his miraculous rescue, his escape with his life is just a dream. Simon’s dream. What he dreams comes true. Starsky died on that rock strung up with Gail slitting his throat and a bat swinging to break his arms where they hold him up and a chain wrapping his ribs in pain and a cleaver cutting deep into his chest. This Starsky came home in a dream. This Starsky might not be here at all.

_Simon. Simon. Simon. Simon…_

_The chant circles him, surrounds him like water, overlapping till he can’t make out distinct voices or spaces between the words. It becomes like breathing: constant, unconscious. He notices it when he listens for it; it is there when he doesn’t. He thinks that’s good. He thinks that’s terrifying. He’s in between._

_He sees the man in the robe with a cleaver, his face hidden by his hood. He’s ready now, he knows what happens next. He doesn’t feel the pain in his arms from hanging there. He doesn’t feel afraid. He talks them through each step of the killing: the knife, the bat, the chain, the cleaver._

_He looks closer at the man with the cleaver. He’s smiling as he lifts and lowers it, lifts and lowers it, grunting with the effort. He sees Starsky looking, and pulls down his hood to show him what he already knows, must know, has been expecting: his own face looking back at him, bright blue eyes, a wide smile, and a spatter of blood across his teeth._

*

It’s incredible what the human body can do with simple rest and recuperation. Hutch has had a bath, two glasses of yogurt with oats, molasses and passionfruit, and, apparently, around ten hours of deep sleep. Sure, his back still feels like a pretzel and there’s a bruise or two that’ll take a week to come out. But compared to this morning, he’s a whole new man.

The phone is the only thing that’s going to get him out of bed again before tomorrow. It’s not Starsky, or Dobey.

‘Hutch? What it is.’

‘Hey, Huggy. Take it you heard how it all went down.’

‘My man, for two occasionally undercover cops, you two sure like to be in the spotlight.’

‘I don’t like it, Hug, trust me.’

‘You are not alone. You talked to our mutual friend today?’

‘Dropped him off, left him to sleep.’ He feels uneasy suddenly. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Somethin’ ain’t right. The cat is a cat who loves tomato, you dig? But not today.’

‘Huggy, I only just woke up.’

There’s a pause, as Huggy huffs and puffs at the thought of curtailing his jive. ‘The tomato. The car. I did him the service of collecting it and taking it for a lick of polish, on account of how I know Starsky is particular about his wheels. And when I knock on his door to deliver this good tidings, my man is not happy to see me.’

‘Maybe you woke him up too, Hug.’

‘Don’t know how much sleeping he’s been doing. The boy looks like he’s walked to the moon and back without taking a break. Didn’t want to open the door. Told me to park her out back, and keep the keys.’

Hutch is very awake now. Starsky parks that car outside the apartment under his window so he can see her any time he likes and hear if anyone dares get near enough to scratch her up. Keep the keys? Unthinkable.

‘All right, Huggy. Thanks. I’ll head over. He, uh… I guess he had a rough time out there.’

‘You tell him the keys are his, whenever he’s ready for ‘em.’

Hutch hangs up and stares at his hand on the phone, frozen. A rough time? They both know what Marcus’s followers were into: sadistic games, mind control, savage violence. He hadn’t asked. He was just so desperately happy they’d found him. And frankly, so tired. They both were, but the guilt hangs heavy just the same.

He makes two quick stops on the way: the precinct, and the crummiest pizzeria he knows, the kind that makes them big, floppy and swimming in grease.

‘Starsk? Open up, I brought dinner. Well, for you, I’m not eating this.’

Hutch expects a wait but the door is open before he’s even finished speaking.

‘Hey! Food. That’s great Hutch, thank you.’

Starsky opens the door just wide enough to reach out for the pizza box, clearly hoping to slide it inside and close it again. His eyes are big and bright but not meeting Hutch’s, his smile too intense to be genuine. He’s still wearing the hospital scrubs. Hutch lets him grip the box, but steps one foot inside and holds it firm against the door closing.

‘Come on, Starsk. Huggy called me.’ Hutch keeps hold of the box, forcing Starsky to look up.

He looks terrified.

‘All right,’ says Hutch grimly, pushing inside, slipping the pizza and the file hidden beneath onto the counter. Starsky doesn’t move. He stands limply at the half open door, like he doesn’t know what to do next.

Shock; trauma. That’s ok. Hutch can deal with that.

Kicking the door closed with his toe, he steers Starsky to the couch, setting him down and wrapping a blanket over him. He grabs a plate and a slice, a glass of water and a beer for himself, and drops onto the table, sitting knee to knee.

‘Hey buddy? You need to eat, ok? Not gonna claim it’s got nutritional value, but I’ll save the lecture for tomorrow. Today you get pizza.’

Starsky looks at his plate, seeming lost. It’s unsettling to say the least.

Hutch reaches for his arm, but Starsky recoils with a gasp. The bandage is still wrapped around from wrist halfway to elbow but it’s raggedy now, as if he’s been scratching at it, and there’s dried blood on it.

‘Sorry,’ Hutch says, raising his palms placatingly. ‘You want me to look at that? First aid kit under the sink, right?’

He takes Starsky’s silence for consent, but when he rises, Starsky grabs him with his other hand, eyes full of panic.

‘Can you see me? Do I look normal to you? Do I look like me?’

Hutch sits back down, hard.

‘Here: this, here, does this feel right?’ Starsky pulls Hutch’s hand to his chest, flattening the palm across his heart. ‘Hutch, please. I know I sound crazy. I know, I can hear myself, I know what I’m asking isn’t ok but please, just, I need you to tell me. I need you to tell me I’m here. Please.’

He looks desperate, as if what Hutch says next could shatter him.

Hutch doesn’t know what the hell this is but he tries to breathe normally, and keep his face calm. ‘You’re here, Starsk. I’m here, and you’re here. You look normal to me – tired, and a little freaked out, which I think is probably exactly a normal reaction to what happened to you – so yeah, you look normal. You are David Starsky, in your apartment, with your partner Hutch.’

He very carefully lifts his palm away from where Starsky is gripping it to his chest, and gently takes Starsky’s unbandaged arm to place Starsky’s hand on his chest.

Starsky looks down at his own hand and clenches the fingers, clinging onto Hutch’s shirt like he doesn’t dare let go.

*

Hutch says it’s ok, and has to trust something here, and he doesn’t want to trust the others. He wants to trust Hutch. Hutch saved him, he’s earned it.

Unless he didn’t save him.

Starsky tries holding on tighter to drown out the rest of the voices, and he can feel the warmth of Hutch’s skin and the roughness of his shirt, a button digging into his palm. He holds even tighter because it helps. You have to find the things that feel real. Landmarks, to navigate by.

‘All right. That’s good. That’s good, Starsk. You want to eat some pizza, maybe?’

He doesn’t want to eat some pizza. His stomach does something at the idea and he feels sick. Hunches over and retches off the side of the couch, bringing up nothing.

The voices are louder now. He lets his mouth move along with them. They like that.

‘Stop that. Hey! What is that? Starsk? Hey!’

Hutch’s face is really close up to his now and he sounds mad, so Starsky makes his mouth go quiet.

‘OK, buddy. OK. You slept at all today, Starsk?’

‘No. Yeah. I was on the floor, and when I woke up I wasn’t, so. Yeah?’

He probably shouldn’t have said that. Hutch is gonna worry now, and he’s already done a ton of worrying about Starsky, and really does it matter if Starsky sleeps or not, when he’s dreaming anyway? But Hutch doesn’t agree.

‘Come on. Let’s get you into that bed. Sleeping on the floor’s no good.’

‘No good,’ Starsky agrees.

The bed is huge and neatly-made by that other Starsky, the one from before this. He _is_ tired. He could sleep for a week. Hutch finds him some jersey pajama bottoms and though they feel rough he remembers them being soft and comfortable, so he tells himself they are. The sheets feel rough too but he thinks that’s just his skin being broken from all the times they killed him. He’s got scars, it makes sense.

He starts trying to tell Hutch but Hutch has gone, and he thinks maybe that’s lucky. Then Hutch comes back with two big pills and a glass of water, even though Starsky put those pills in a drawer because he’s already not Starsky and pills won’t help that one bit.

‘It’s just pain medication, that’s all,’ says Hutch, pressing them into his hand. ‘Doesn’t look like the hospital envisaged you’d need anything else.’

Starsky thinks he’s being told off, somehow. He doesn’t want the water, because the water hurts when you drink it. Gail gave him water – he was so thirsty, they gave him a bath but they never gave him a drink till later, what was that about? – and then it felt like he was dying from the inside out.

‘They put something in the water,’ he tries to tell Hutch, trying to give him the glass back.

‘At the storefront,’ says Hutch, nodding. ‘That’s right, you remember, that’s great, Starsk. Where we found the followers, and arrested Marcus. We saved them from drinking it. There’s no drugs in this water, though. Just came out of your kitchen.’

Starsky thinks he’s not listening. But he wants to sleep, so he puts the pills in his mouth and lets in a tiny sip, just enough, to wash them down.

Hutch tries to pry at the dressing on his arm so he puts it under the covers, and that stops him.

‘I’m going to go get something to read, sit on your couch for a little while. That ok, Starsk?’

Starsky doesn’t know.

Hutch smiles anyway.

Starsky doesn’t think you can sleep if you’re already dreaming, so maybe he doesn’t need to be in this bed feeling scratched and sore and itchy. But he’s tired so he tries keeping still and –

_Simon. Simon. Simon. Simon…_

_The chant scratches his skin, or perhaps it’s the robe: long, black folds about his body and a hood half covering his face. His skin is on fire. He can hear something growling and biting, feel jaws around his arm and a sharp tooth piercing his skin. He cries out. It changes nothing. The tooth keeps jabbing at his arm, and someone is sitting on his chest, shouting as if to try to cover up his cries._

_He’s carrying the cleaver in the same hand which is why it feels so heavy. Blood runs down his wrist and drips off the blade. It’s not his blood though. He lifts it and lowers it, lifts it and lowers it, each blow landing perfectly in the centre of the chest where the skin is warm, and the shirt is rough, and he can feel a button digging into his palm._

_Hutch looks at him as he strikes, his face contorted with pain and tiredness and sorrow because Starsky would feel awful if he killed Hutch, and here he is, killing Hutch. He could be Gail, trying to save him, like Gail tried to save Starsky. But he’s not Gail. Hutch told him: you’re David Starsky. So he lifts his cleaver, and kills._

*

Hutch looks at the beer he’d picked out for himself, and sets it aside. He needs a clear head for this. He’s out of his depth; way out. They’ve been through the mill together, many times, and they’ve always had each other’s backs, but it’s clear Starsky’s in trouble that’s long past physical.

If he had any sense he’d have seen this coming. This wasn’t some hood out for revenge, some bad day at work. Far as he knows Starsky got pulled into a living nightmare, and damn near didn’t make it back out.

The cult feels like a distraction. One benefit of being stuck in a cell with Simon Marcus: he’s the painted actor Hutch always imagined. That schooled voice, to sound portentous no matter what nonsense he’s spouting. The hair, the tattoo, the riddles. Enjoying playing ringmaster, with nothing behind it but sociopathy.

The trouble is: it makes no difference. Hutch remembers the chill he felt seeing that photo in the paper at the hospital; remembers the blank dull faces of the kids in the store, still following their leader blindly when the man had already been exposed as a fraud, a murderer. Chanting, endlessly, as if that had replaced conscious thought while Hutch begged them for help.

To have heard the same low murmur from his partner right here in this room; seen his stare, just as blank. It’s chilling.

Hutch doesn’t believe in supernatural control or magic spells. He doesn’t believe Marcus’s power is anything other than the ability to appear messianic, for his own sick ends. But he knows what’s in front of him and it’s a version of his partner who seems to have lost a part of himself back in that awful place. He just needs to figure out how, and why, and fix it, before he sinks his partner’s career under a mountain of pysch eval paperwork. Starting with finding out what the hell they did to him in there.

He reaches for the file he pilfered from records on the way over.

Gail Overton, it turns out, is not entirely lucid, but not as far from sense as the man she’d followed. She had been interviewed under a psychiatric hold, but her answers were only half nonsense about ascension and dreaming. When it came to describing the zoo, the kidnapping, her time with Starsky – there the details seemed relatively clear, if bewildering.

It makes for grim reading.

‘The pilgrim was taken to the circle first where the initiation occurs, to see if he would be raised by the word of Simon to ascend and join us. But he did not ascend. So they beat him and took him to the lowest cave in submission. I thought he might be dead already he was so quiet, for so long. But it was not what Simon dreamed.

‘Then Fa Ben ordered me to wait with the pilgrim till he woke, and cleanse his wounds and his body to purify him. I wanted to kill him then because I had been given the knife, and I knew this was his destiny, but it was not what Simon dreamed. The pilgrim was kind to me and I remembered my brother from my time in the other world, which is not allowed, so I ran and left him. He tried to escape and I was afraid, but Simon had dreamed this too, and it was a trap. Fa Ben led him to the bear in the bear cave, and I thought he would be rent by it, but it was not his destiny. This was his first test of three, and he was brave.’

Hutch stops reading. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t that. He tries to imagine the terror of it, fails, and guesses that’s probably a good thing.

‘The second test was fire, because it purifies and drives out the evil within. Again the pilgrim was brave, and he burned very little, so I knew he had much evil still left within him. This is why Simon had chosen him as the pilgrim, for he is like the snake who speaks well but draws you into his sin, and then I knew his kindness was temptation and though I was tempted, I must resist.

‘The third test was for us both. I did not know what would happen when he drank the water, or what they would do with the blade; all I knew was his time was soon. When he was unconscious, Fa Ben brought the pen of Simon and they joined him to us. This way his soul is always bonded with Simon, and he will always be ours, in life or death.’

Hutch reads the lines over and over. Why couldn’t these people just say what they mean? Joining, the pen of Simon: it feels like having to interview the damn man all over again.

He stands and stretches, is contemplating a slice of the awful pizza when Starsky screams.

It’s not a nightmare moan or a call for help. This is a scream of urgent pain, like he’s being attacked. Hutch is in there in seconds and find him writhing in the sheets, still screaming but still sleeping. Reaching for an arm leaves him slapped and swatted; calling his name is a pointless competition. In the end Hutch climbs onto the bed and carefully pins him till the struggling eases and he can grip Starsky’s shoulders and repeat his name, shaking him gently.

His eyes snap open mid-yell and it cuts off in a gasp of shock.

‘Easy, now,’ says Hutch softly, shifting back and climbing carefully off the bed. ‘You’re ok. You’re here. I’m here.’

Starsky is trembling all over, his body slick with sweat and his chest rising and falling fast as he tries to get his breathing to slow. He reaches out a hand and Hutch grabs it, squeezing gently.

‘Oh god, Hutch,’ he whispers. ‘I think they did something to me.’

*

Starsky doesn’t know what he dreamed but he thinks it was bad, and he thinks Hutch knows that much.

He comes back with more water and gets mad when Starsky won’t drink it. Then he runs the shower, and puts Starsky in there with his pajama pants still on. The water feels cool but then too hot and Hutch keeps pushing him back under the water to get him clean, even though this won’t wash off, what’s inside him now.

The water starts flowing red and Starsky thinks this is definitely still a dream, which feels pretty unfair since he’s trying so hard to keep the difference straight, but it turns out his bandage is wet and his arm is wet and it’s bleeding, so he must have been cut. Or bit? Did that happen?

Anyway Hutch pulls him out of the shower and wraps him up in a towel, which makes his skin scream, and finds him new clothes, and puts him all clean and damp on the couch to wait while he fetches the first aid kit.

‘Can you hear them?’ he asks, when Hutch comes back and sits close beside him, as if Starsky isn’t dangerous at all, so that’s nice. ‘Do they say to you what they say to me?’

He knows not to join in because Hutch doesn’t like it but he thinks the chanting is louder when they’re talking, like they know Hutch is close. He asks again and raises his voice over the sound of it, but Hutch looks scared and he holds Starsky’s shoulders down to make it stop.

‘Hey! Don’t yell at me. You don’t have to yell at me. I don’t know what you mean, Starsk, ok? Just sit tight while I take a look at this arm. Please.’

Hutch unwraps the wet bandage carefully, revealing a pad of gauze that is thick with dark dried blood and now damp enough to peel away with only some pain.

Underneath is a tattoo. Nothing professional, and certainly nothing that’s showing any sign of healing. It looks like it’s been made by slashing the skin with a knife, and inking into the wound. It matches Simon’s, and all the followers: an inverted cross.

‘Starsk? You know this was there?’

Starsky shakes his head slowly. No. He thought he’d remember something like that, but maybe it only happened to this him. It explains everything though. It’s why he hears them. It’s why he’s not David Starsky, whatever Hutch says. He belongs to Simon now.

‘Sorry, Hutch.’

Hutch frowns kindly as he begins redressing the wound. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry for.’

Starsky shakes his head, because Hutch is wrong. ‘I do. I just haven’t done it yet.’

*

It takes one quick call to summon Huggy, and one long and wholly unproductive conversation with Starsky to explain that Hutch has to go out, and he’ll come back, and that Starsky will be just fine until then.

Starsky’s not having it, and Huggy arrives in the middle of what feels somewhere between a five-year-old’s tantrum and a full-on psychotic break.

‘I need you to be here, Hutch,’ Starsky pleads. He clutches onto Hutch’s shirt again, hanging onto it like a lifebelt. ‘They’ll know. They’ll know if you go, and then I can’t pass the test, and I won’t wake up.’

‘My company’s not so dry,’ says Huggy, trying to look relaxed and failing utterly. He throws Hutch a wary look: you sure about this?

Starsky blinks at Huggy, barely seeming to recognise him and certainly not caring. ‘If I can hear them, they can hear me,’ he whispers to Hutch, as if sharing an important secret. ‘They’ll know. It’ll be my fault. Simon’s gonna be mad, Hutch.’

Hutch feels his chest contract. It’s the first time he’s said it loud and clear, but it tracks with everything he’s been afraid to think. Instead of killing him as a sacrifice, it looks like Simon Marcus found a way to make Starsky join his cult – without even being in the same room. It’s not possible, he knows that. Marcus doesn’t have some supernatural power over people. But right now, what he believes doesn’t matter. Starsky believes it. Right now, that’s his truth.

Hutch feels a pang of regret for allowing anyone to see his partner like this. Huggy’s never gonna tell, but frankly Hutch is finding it hard to keep from panicking; it’s not a feeling he wants to share out.

‘Starsk, please,’ says Hutch, pulling away as he pushes Starsky hard against the wall, trying to shake a little of himself back in there. Starsky’s grip is so tight that he’s left holding a button, ripping it right off Hutch’s shirt. Starsky stares at it, fascinated: a small pearlized button with a torn white thread, nestling in his palm. It seems to calm him, somehow. Hutch decides to run with it.

‘There. You’ve got a piece of me with you, ok? So if you need me, you just look at the button, and it’s right here.’

It’s bananas, and Huggy looks at him like maybe both of them have lost their minds. But in Starsky’s muddled brain it holds some kind of logic, and he allows Hutch to lead him to the couch to lie down, button held tight.

Hutch grabs Gail’s folder, and beckons Huggy to the door.

‘Starting to think he was right about me keeping his car keys, know what I’m saying?’

‘I know, Hug, I know. It’s – it’s a lot. Listen, I’ll be an hour, maybe two.’

‘Take all the time you need, my man. I seen you strung out, remember? I’ll see him through.’

Hutch is halfway out the door before he really hears it.

‘What did you say?’

Huggy raises an eyebrow, bristling. ‘Discretion is always my watchword, Detective Hutchinson. I never told a soul about that time. This’ll be no different.’

‘No – Huggy, I didn’t mean – strung out? You think that’s what this is?’

‘You don’t?’ Huggy gives Starsky an assessing look. ‘Can’t say what particular medicine it is. But they gave him a good long drink of it, for sure.’

Hutch freezes. He flips open the folder, scanning; remembers the pills Starsky didn’t want to take. _They put something in the water_. He told him: he said it out loud and he just didn’t hear it.

‘I’m an idiot. You’re a genius. Thank you, Huggy. I’ll be back!’

Hutch belts down the stairs, desperate to prove his theory right.

‘Now that, I am going to broadcast,’ comes Huggy’s voice floating down the stairs behind him.

*

_Simon. Simon. Simon. Simon…_

He’s awake again.

Huggy is sitting with his knees drawn up in a kitchen chair. Hutch is – Hutch is gone. The button’s still in Starsky’s hand, the shape of it imprinted into his skin now.

‘I say anything?’ Starsky asks, pretty sure of the answer from Huggy’s face.

‘Plenty. Nothing fit to repeat.’

The voices like that. He thought they might be angry but they know Huggy’s not a threat.

What did Hutch say? An hour, two hours. That means he’ll be back soon and it can happen, and Starsky can stop dreaming and just rest. One test, that’s all. He can do it. He wants to. He’s so tired, and everything is so loud and angry and bright in his head, so he wants to.

‘Coffee,’ he mumbles, though the thought makes him want to retch again, swinging his legs off the couch. ‘You want?’

‘Let me, Starsk – ’

‘Not an invalid. Let me fix you a drink for once, ok?’

Huggy settles back into his chair, though Starsky can feel he’s being watched as he fills the pot and tugs open a drawer. Knives. No cleavers. He finds the biggest and heaviest, laying it on the counter.

‘Gonna cut some apples,’ Starsky says, seeing Huggy’s look of alarm. He winces, feeling the bandage on his wrist. ‘You know what – I could use a hand back here. This thing is pretty sore.’

‘No big.’ Huggy hops up and glides into the kitchen.

Starsky waits as he readies two cups. The moment Huggy turns his back, looking for creamer, Starsky strikes. One blow, hard, to the back of the head with the butt of the knife. Starsky knows what he’s doing: Huggy drops, and does not move.

‘Simon doesn’t need you,’ Starsky tells him, though he knows he can’t hear. ‘There’s only one pilgrim.’

The knife feels good in his hand. He wishes he had his robe, but Hutch took it. He unwinds the bandage from his arm. He still has the mark, and the mark is enough.

He steps out of the apartment, down the stairs and outside, into fresh air. His arm hurts, in a good way. He knows what he needs to do.

Find Hutch.

Kill Hutch.

Stop dreaming.

*

Hutch damn near drives off the road as he peels out towards the hospital, hitting the gas and grabbing the radio to summon Dobey.

The Captain isn’t best pleased.

‘You call me here to demand Starsky needs more tests, and you don’t bring him with you? What the hell, Hutchinson?’

‘Captain, it’s complicated, ok? If I’m right, he just needs fluids, sedatives and close supervision.’

‘All of which he should be in the hospital to receive!’

Hutch wishes just for once that Dobey would trust him off the bat, instead of this dance. He lowers his voice, but speaks with purpose. ‘If I brought Starsky into the hospital right now, they’d lock him up and throw away the key. I’m trying to save his future as well as his life. I just – he’s been through a lot, Captain. I don’t want to make this hell any worse for him if I don’t have to.’

Dobey softens, the way he always does when faced with losing one of his guys.

‘I’ll allow it. But if you’re wrong – ’

‘If I’m wrong, he’ll be here in a heartbeat.’

The door to the lab swings open, and Dr Jennings enters, looking severe as always.

‘Cheryl.’ Hutch shakes her hand awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry we always end up meeting like this.’

‘Hazard of the job. Though Starsky does seem more hazardous than most. I ran a tox screen off the sample he left as you asked. We did find something: a psychotropic compound. Nothing off the shelf, but something not dissimilar to LSD. Also – ’

‘Psylocibin?’

She blinks, reading and nodding. ‘How did you know?’

‘Magic mushrooms,’ he explains to a blank-faced Dobey. ‘That old store front, where Marcus was caught? He was trying to get a group of his followers to take a drugged drink that was meant to, I don’t know, help them ascend to his plane of existence or whatever. We got there before they drank it, but when it was tested that was the combination. Gail gave Starsky something to drink the night before they nearly killed him. They cut him, too – like a bootleg tattoo done with a knife, ink poured in.’

Dobey gives Hutch a look, but thankfully files whatever dressing down Hutch is due for later.

‘Cheryl, is it possible that the combination of those could lead to hallucinations, delusions?’

‘Absolutely. The effects of the psylocibin usually last up to 8 hours, but it can be several days. Combined with the other psychotropic, both in quantity… ’

‘And the fact that he was in a highly-pressured environment, his life in danger?’

Cheryl looks bleak. ‘I would imagine he’s enduring the definition of a so-called bad trip. Is it very bad?’

‘Cheryl, is it gonna kill him?’

‘If it was going to, it would have already. Unless – ’

Hutch’s head snaps back up. ‘Unless what?’

‘Unless he’s a danger to himself.’

Hutch sits back on the desk, and rubs his chest, feeling the gap where the button is missing.

‘Well?’ demands Dobey.

‘Honestly? Right now I wouldn’t trust Starsky to cross the road by himself. Don’t look at me like that, Captain. Huggy’s with him. I’ll go back there now, pack up his things and bring him in.’

Starsky’s going to hate him for it. But if this thing has a shelf life; if he has to get sedated for a couple of days, or locked in a padded room –

The phone rings, and Cheryl hands it to him. ‘Message for you?’

Hutch takes it, as bewildered as she is. ‘Detective Hutchinson?’

‘Hutch? He’s gone. He cold-cocked me. I must’ve been out for ten minutes, max, but I can’t find him. Front door’s open. Car’s here. And Hutch? He took a knife.’

*

‘I dropped the button.’

He doesn’t remember where because he doesn’t remember getting here. He doesn’t know where here is. When he left he was going to find Hutch, and Hutch was – where did Hutch go? The precinct, probably. So maybe he meant to go there, but instead he’s here.

‘I dropped the button.’

He hears a blare of horns and a car rushes past him so close it ruffles the hair on his arms. He turns to get out of the way but it happens again, and again. There’s a screech of brakes, and yelling. He keeps walking, walking, till it stops. He’s on a sidewalk, he guesses. There’s sun in his eyes, very bright, pulsing green and pink and gold like a flower, so he can’t see right, but he can hear people, voices. Not his voices. They’ve stopped talking to him. He thinks they’re angry because of the button, though he can’t remember why it mattered.

‘I dropped the button,’ he says again.

‘I don’t care about your damn button, you freak,’ yells a man he can’t see.

Someone pushes past him, almost knocking him down. He stumbles, waving his arm.

‘That guy’s got a knife!’

‘Did someone call 911? Marion? Call the cops, this kookoo’s got a blade!’

Starsky thinks he should’ve stayed in his apartment. Hutch would’ve come back. He promised. Now he doesn’t know where Hutch is, or Simon, or him.

‘Find Hutch,’ he says, quietly, though he doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself or someone else. Maybe both. ‘Find Hutch,’ he says again, in case the other one needs to hear it too.

He decides to keep walking and as he does he feels a pattern of feet behind and he can see them, the followers, like a train of support backing him up. He can do this. They want him to.

He keeps walking and wishes he could see instead of just hearing all these people scream and scatter out of his way, and then he hears it: sirens.

‘Hutch!’ he yells, loud as he can. ‘Hutch! Hutch!’ He keeps yelling it as cars squeal to a stop around him and the sirens drop out.

‘Starsky! It’s me. I’m here. Quit yelling, ok, it’s Hutch. I’m here.’

Starsky turns in a circle, braced for someone to jump him, knife raised. He can feel robes around him, sand and grit beneath his feet. An animal smell. He can’t see.

‘I can’t see!’

‘Well, that’s ok, Starsk. I’m going to get you some help. You want some help?’

He does. He really does – but it’s not allowed. ‘Only one way you can help me, Hutch.’

‘Oh yeah? How’s that?’

‘I have to kill you.’ Starsky turns to look at the pattern behind him. Something’s moving, running, he doesn’t like it. They don’t like it. ‘I don’t think they wanted me to tell you that.’

‘You don’t have to listen to them, Starsky. Do you want to kill me?’

‘Yeah.’ He doesn’t really think about it, it’s just true.

‘You’re my partner, Starsk. Why d’you wanna kill me?’

‘So I can come back.’

‘You don’t have to come back from anywhere, Starsk. You’re here. You’re right here. Remember?’

He feels a hand touch his chest and it feel like something blooms out of it, blood or water or flowers, a shape that grows around him.

‘You’re David Starsky. You’re right here. I’m Hutch. I’m right here too.’

His hand is lifted and pressed against another chest. Someone close by. Hutch, his friend Hutch.

‘I dropped the button,’ whispers Starsky.

‘That’s ok, you don’t need it any more. You gonna drop the knife, too?’

He feels it in his hand again, as if it was gone and now it’s back.

‘Scared, Hutch.’

‘I know, buddy. I know. You want to rest now?’

‘Will I wake up?’

‘Yeah. You’ll wake up, Starsk.’

‘OK.’

He lets go of something and then everything moves around him like a blur, and then he’s lying down, but someone’s holding his hand.

*

Hutch is back in a hospital waiting room, but he doesn’t let himself get mad about it today. Turns out it’s ok to ask for help. In fact, turns out making yourself the one and only source of it when you’re also beat down and running on empty is about the worst idea he could’ve come up with.

Maybe he’s a little mad about it. At himself. Pointless, and no use to Starsky, but honest. They both need to work on that.

He lets Huggy go in first, because he knows Starsky will want to apologise, and also because he figures it’s a shorter conversation than the one he needs to have.

Huggy slides out the door, holding a bottle of champagne with a huge satin bow.

‘Your man knows how to say sorry. I even still got Torino rights. Once a month, except in the summer, but from him? That’s like gold watches.’

Hutch smiles at how easily he forgives. ‘I owe you a debt of thanks for seeing what I couldn’t – and an apology too, Hug. I shouldn’t have called you in the first place. He needed help, we could both see that.’

‘Well this is my brand,’ says Huggy, brandishing the bottle, ‘and you know the address. See you later, gator.’

He tips his hat and glides away, cooing at the nurses on the way out.

It’s possible the other reason he let Huggy go first is that suddenly he’s as scared as he was when he stepped into that bathroom and found Starsky’s name written in blood on the glass. His partner is ridiculous and dopey and hotheaded and just about the most important thing in his life. He’s also getting outstandingly good at near-death experiences, and Hutch needs to find a way to deal with that before he gets them both killed.

Which isn’t going to happen sitting out here.

A tap on the door and he’s in an uncomfortably familiar-looking room: green-painted walls, bed on wheels, and Starsky propped up in it trying his best to look like himself when they both know he’s not feeling it.

‘Hey. Two visitors in one day, I’m a lucky guy.’

‘I even brought grapes,’ says Hutch, dropping a paper bag on Starsky’s lap as he settles into the bedside chair.

‘Great,’ says Starsky unconvincingly. Then he peers into the bag, and beams as he pulls out two cans of grape soda. ‘Hey! OK, your gifting privileges can stay.’

‘It was gonna be beer, but Cheryl nixed it. You need to let everything get out if your system first.’

Starsky nods, lowering his eyes. ‘I tell you, Hutch,’ he says softly. ‘The idea people do that stuff for fun? Now that really does blow my mind.’

‘Mostly they’re volunteers. Have some idea what they’re letting themselves in for. And, well, not doing it alongside a horrifically traumatic experience.’

Too much? Starsky grimaces, his eyes still looking at his hands. But he nods, slowly. ‘Yeah. Not much volunteering from me.’

A carousel of nightmarish images, half guesswork, half fact rolls through Hutch’s mind. ‘So I heard.’

Starsky looks confused. ‘I didn’t think I was making much sense back at my place.’

It’s Hutch’s turn to grimace. ‘I read Gail’s file. I didn’t mean to intrude, Starsk. I would’ve asked you to tell me whatever you wanted me to, nothing more, when you were ready. I just needed a shortcut. But I’m sorry. I don’t even know how much you remember about what happened.’

Starsky sighs, smiling a little as he shrugs, eyes glittering. ‘Quite a time they gave me, huh?’

Hutch thinks that means he remembers plenty, and feels a little worse. ‘Sounds like. I’d rather have heard it from you, though. Aside from Gail not being the most reliable witness – well, it didn’t happen to her. Not the same, at least.’

Starsky rests his head back on the pillow. ‘She mention a bear?’

Hutch nods.

‘That was real, huh.’ Starsky looks thoughtful. ‘That was what tipped me over, you know? Like, they were crazy, and I figured from the time they snatched me, well, there’s like a, ninety-nine per cent chance of this going bad so I’m going fight and yell and argue and do what I can, because nothing to lose. And then they give me this window to run, which I figure is a trap but what the hell and then – a bear, Hutch. I thought I’d lost my mind. That they were getting to me, and I was seeing things. And after that… it was harder to fight. There was me, the real me, watching it all and thinking: these people are crazy, this whole thing is crazy, how can this be happening? But there’s the me where that’s reality. And there is a bear, and is there is a caveman with a flaming torch, and there is a guy with a cleaver ready to hack my heart out.’

Hutch feels sick hearing it. But Starsky’s still thinking, working it all out. He hesitates, rubbing a hand over his face and wincing as it pulls on the dressing over the skin graft on his arm, catches the sore skin over his cheekbone.

‘Feels like I let them in. Like – trying to hurt you. I let them get into my head. I swear, I believed it: that Simon could control me. Heard his voice, all their voices. And I know, I know that was the drugs talking, but that’s how I got there. Maybe I did volunteer, you know? I lost track of what was real long before they gave me a damn thing.’

He looks up, a little sad, rueful; ashamed, too.

Hutch takes his hand, and takes a deep breath. ‘I think I let them into my head a little too, Starsk. And no one was hurting me, threatening me, drugging me. All I did was talk to Marcus.’

‘You talked to him? I didn’t know that.’

‘We wouldn’t have found you without it. He gave us riddles, the kind we might not solve in time.’ Nearly didn’t solve in time, he almost says, as if Starsky doesn’t know that all too well. ‘At the time, I just thought he was a phony, trying his mind games on me because he knew I didn’t have a choice but to be there; enjoying having me hanging on his every word. But – afterwards? I let that blind me, Starsk. You started to believe it and – I was right there with you. Took Huggy to make me stop acting like a convert and think like a detective.’

‘Guess he did a number on us both,’ Starsky says solemnly. ‘It’s funny, you know; those kids, the ones we found with him? I thought they were the perfect targets: drifters, junkies, people with no one to turn to or set them straight. Vulnerable people. But turns out it works on regular folks too.’

Hutch sits forward, feeling the ache in every muscle from the last few days of tension.

‘I don’t think that’s it, Starsk. I think we’re vulnerable people. I think we make each other vulnerable. I turned the city upside down trying to find you, and I didn’t care about the risk; even about being in some kind of state to help when I did get there.’

‘Seem to remember you did pretty good,’ says Starsky meaningfully.

Hutch tilts his head. ‘Right then? Sure. Adrenaline’s going to take you a long way, you know that. But after? I think maybe you needed me even more after. I should’ve come to crash on your couch – god knows someone should have. But I was glad you turned me down. I wanted to go home, I needed to rest, to… to not be terrified for you for just a day.’

‘And I didn’t even give you that. Course you needed to rest, you big lummox. I should’ve stayed in here like they told me to, instead of checking myself out like some rookie.’

‘And why did you do that? So I’d know I saved you. So I’d know you were fine. So I wouldn’t worry.’

Starsky raises his eyebrows: apparently this thought is new. ‘I mean, I also hate hospital food,’ he says, eventually. ‘But – yeah I guess that was a part of it. I wanted to be ok so bad. For both of us. And then I knew I wasn’t but – I didn’t want to call when I knew you were so beat.’

‘We’re so busy looking out for each other we’re doing a lousy job of taking care of either of us. That’s what makes us vulnerable, Starsk. We’re doing it to ourselves.’

Starsky lifts his eyes to the ceiling. He looks tired; more than tired. Ten minutes max and keep it light, Cheryl had ordered. He should’ve saved this for another day, Hutch thinks; when he’s out, when he’s rested, and they can dripfeed this kind of chat in between work and food and not let it be the biggest thing in the room.

But Starsky’s head rolls in his direction, his hand still in Hutch’s.

‘You know what? You’re pretty smart, Hutch, figuring all this out,’ he says drowsily, his eyes dropping closed. ‘Kind of glad I didn’t kill you. We’ll get it right next time.’

‘How about we make sure there’s not a next time?’

But Starsky’s out.

Hutch sits and watches him, finding it hard to leave. He keeps his hand in Starsky’s.

‘We’ll get it right next time, partner.’


End file.
